


fremdschämen

by doomcountry



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Awkward Conversations, Gen, Hellish Social Scenario, Pre-The Unknowing (The Magnus Archives), Season/Series 03, Shades-of-Slaughter Melanie, hurt/some comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-07
Updated: 2020-06-07
Packaged: 2021-03-04 01:01:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,875
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24594940
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doomcountry/pseuds/doomcountry
Summary: None of them particularly want to go to Martin’s tonight, Jon knows. None of them particularly want to go to Great Yarmouth, either, though - which might be why the idea of the dinner party didn’t exactly float well on Friday.
Comments: 15
Kudos: 88





	fremdschämen

None of them particularly want to go to Martin’s tonight, Jon knows, looking down at his scuffed, unpolished oxfords—his best shoes, at this point—and the stretched-out grey socks sagging around his ankles. None of them particularly want to go to Great Yarmouth, either, though, which might be why the idea of the dinner party didn’t exactly float well on Friday.

Martin had sent out an email, rather than talking to anyone, which was his first mistake. After a long week and that harrowing tape of Gertrude’s, the last thing anyone wanted to see in their inboxes was a brightly-colored evite suggesting that they all get together at Martin’s on Sunday for some dinner and drinks. Jon is sure the tone Martin was going for was completely innocent—something like _let’s all forget our worries for a while,_ but—poor thing—in the end it had come across more like _one last hurrah before we all die._ In pastels. With balloons.

Melanie had not been happy. Jon had heard her crashing around the break room and muttering to herself, the invite still open on her computer. He’d seen Basira and Daisy whispering about it, too, with frowns on their faces. Tim had gone to take a very long walk and hadn’t shown his face the rest of the day. And yet, one by one, they had all clicked the RSVP.

An admittedly ill-timed and ill-conceived proposition, but at the end of the day it’s so hard to say no to Martin. Jon certainly hadn’t been able to. It’s why he’s standing in front of the dusty mirror in the hall, trying to decide if it’s worth the struggle to tame a persistently rebellious lock of his hair that keeps falling over his eye. He’s more dressed up now than he can remember being in—years, maybe. The invitation hadn’t said anything about dress code. The button-up and slacks are probably too much. He’s thrown a cardigan over top to—he doesn’t know, _informalize_ it a bit. But, knowing Martin, whatever he’s planning will be _too much_ to begin with, so he might as well go along.

He takes a cab to Stockwell, balancing a box of store-bought biscuits on his lap. He’d agonized about that, as well, unsure whether this was the sort of dinner party one brought something to, or if that would be offensive. In the end he’d decided on bringing them. He can always take them home if no one eats them. Finish them off before the end of the world.

Martin lives on the first floor of his building, and as Jon is navigating the bizarrely steep stairs he hears another cab door close on the street and pauses, leaning against the wall with his biscuit box in one hand like a waiter. It’s Tim, ducking in with a paper bag in his grip. He stops when he sees Jon, sighs, as if disappointed, and begins to mount the stairs toward him.

“Evening, boss,” he says, with little real enthusiasm. He squeezes past in the stairwell and Jon turns again to follow him.

“Hello, Tim. What did you bring?” he asks. Tim has already found the door and knocked on it, and is rocking back and forth on his heels. Jon stands carefully beside him, scrutinizing out of the corner of one eye. He’s relieved to see that Tim is also wearing slacks and nicer shoes. Good. He’d have been mortified if he was the only one.

Tim brandishes the paper bag. “Wine,” he says, without looking at Jon. “Hopefully I’ll be blacked out for most of this.”

“Try to be civil,” Jon says, slipping inadvertently into work-tone.

Tim doesn’t look at him. He just sets his jaw and stares into the door as if hoping to burn his way through it.

“Sure thing, _boss._ ”

The door opens then, thank God, and Jon feels immediate relief to see Martin, in a blue jumper with a nice little knit pattern across the chest—vintage, probably—smiling, with a kind of jumpy, nervous-dog energy.

“Hey!” Martin says, breathlessly. His eyes are shining behind his glasses and he grins at both of them as if they are newly-opened Christmas presents and exactly what he asked for. “Hi! Um—come in, come—yeah!”

“Hi, Martin,” Tim says, with at least some attempt at cheer. They shuffle inside, into the narrow front hall past him.

“Thanks for coming! Um—Melanie’s already here,” Martin says. There’s a note of panic in his voice that Jon doesn’t miss. He wonders how awkward _that_ has been so far. “You can take your shoes off. Or not. Whatever you want.”

He’s only been inside for less than a minute and already Jon feels the deep discomfort he had been dreading. Martin’s flat is small and poorly-lit—the bulbs in the lamps are dim and orange-ish, casting everything in draped and gloomy shadows where they don’t quite reach. There are photo frames on the walls, but Jon can’t make out any faces. The air feels damp and clammy—not Martin’s fault, surely, but uncomfortable anyway.

Past him, Jon can see the kitchen, which looks like a disaster zone, the sink full of pots and pans and sheets, the stove crowded with other pots and pans boiling or steaming away, the fridge left slightly open. Martin excuses himself past them and trots back into it, and Jon, still holding his biscuit box, eases around the corner.

“Hi, Melanie,” he says. She’s sitting on a ladderback chair that has clearly been moved from the dining table into the living room for the purposes of seating everyone, holding a glass of red wine, her ankles crossed and her feet in their Doc Martens fidgeting. She lifts a pierced eyebrow at him, nods perfunctorily, and goes back to sipping on her wine.

He swallows. God, he fucking hates parties. Particularly when he is early to them and they involve his coworkers. He never knows what to do with his hands or his body. He swivels, finds a countertop to set his box down on, and takes a deep breath.

“I brought dessert, Martin,” he says, over the sound of boiling water and the whine of the overhead fan. “I hope that’s alright.”

“Oh!” Martin stops stirring at something long enough to glance over and see it, and him. “Thanks, Jon, I—was going to make something but I didn’t—hold on—” He bends down to open the oven, peers inside, swears, and closes it again. “Um—”

“Need a hand?” says Tim, sliding into the kitchen behind him, setting his paper bag down on the counter with a weighty glass _thunk._

“If you could—yeah—”

“Sit down, boss man,” Melanie says, from behind him, and Jon, feeling helpless, turns back. She leans forward, picks up a bottle from the coffee table, selects a somewhat-dusty stemless glass from a tray that’s been placed there, and begins to pour. “Have a drink. Take a load off.”

“Thanks,” Jon says, suddenly grateful for something to do. He takes the glass from her, swallows. Looks into it. Fidgets. “Um—cheers?”

Melanie laughs, leaning back into the chair, which creaks upsettingly. It’s not a nice sound. Neither is her laughter.

“To what?” she says, bitterly.

* * *

It’s another twenty minutes before Basira and Daisy arrive, together, as usual, by which point Jon is struggling to sit still and endure. He wishes Tim hadn’t commandeered the kitchen so quickly. He’s dying for something to do. Melanie hasn’t said a word to him—has hardly moved except to refill his wine glass whether he asks for it or not. That’s a blessing, sort of, as now the space behind his eyes feels a little light and hazy, and the racket in the kitchen has diminished, as Tim seems to have imposed some kind of order on the chaos, talking to Martin in a low voice, shifting things from burners here and there. Still. He wishes desperately there was some music playing, or even just something running mindlessly on the television.

He feels better, though, when Basira, looking fashionable in a pale pink hijab and neatly-tailored navy blue blazer, chooses to sit next to him on the sofa. She even gives him something resembling a greeting smile. Daisy takes the armchair and a glass of wine from Melanie, and though none of them are speaking or really looking at each other, the presence of a few more bodies in the room is—better. Not much, but better.

Jon refills his glass. It’s pretty good wine, all things considered. He wonders if Martin picked it out. At the very least it’s getting him tipsy.

“Okay!” Martin says, finally emerging from the kitchen. His smile is anxious; he’s wiping his palms on his thighs as if they are sweaty. There had been a quiff in his hair at some point, but it’s fallen now, a casualty of the steam in the kitchen. If any of them could use a glass of wine, it’s probably him. “Dinner’s ready—um—if everyone wants to come over to the table—yeah. Sorry.” Jon’s not sure what he’s apologizing for, and he doesn’t seem to know either. “Yeah.”

“Do you need help bringing anything in?” he says, unfolding himself painfully from the sofa, and Martin babbles something nervously about the salad. It’s a relief to escape the stifling atmosphere of the living room, if only briefly, into the stifling humidity of the kitchen.

Dinner is spaghetti bolognese, a huge bowl of salad, and only slightly-burnt homemade garlic bread, all arranged very nicely in various ceramic bowls and plates. Tim has uncorked his bottle of wine and is pouring one for everyone but Basira. The tension in his shoulders seems to have loosened a little. Jon counts that as a win in his mental tally.

This is supposed to be a nice night with his coworkers, he thinks, carrying the massive salad bowl into the next room, waiting for Martin to indicate a place for him to set it down in the middle of the table. Regardless of how little any of them want to be here, they _are_ here. The least they can do—the least _he_ can do—is try to lighten the mood. Make it pleasant, if not necessarily altogether _fun._

“This looks really delicious, Martin,” he says, and makes fleeting but firm eye contact with everyone taking their places, trying to put as much big boss authority as he can behind it—which isn’t much, under the circumstances—but it seems to do the trick. Tim and Melanie see it, swallow, look at one another.

“Yeah,” Tim says, mustering a smile for Martin, who is fussing around with a wrinkled corner of the tablecloth. “It looks great.”

“Thanks for cooking,” Basira says.

“Yeah! Yeah, of course,” Martin stammers, flushing pink, and Jon suppresses a satisfied smile. “Um, I hope it’s good, I don’t—cook for more than just me, usually, you know.”

“I’m sure it’ll be—great,” Melanie says. If she’s lying, it flies over Martin’s head. Probably for the best.

Well. Perhaps not the outpouring of grace and friendship Jon had been hoping for, but he’ll take it. Still torturous, but perhaps survivable.

For a while, once they’re seated, there is only the clattering of cutlery on plates, the occasional murmured “pass that, will you,” the back-and-forth of handing over bowls or bottles. Martin had lit two candles in the middle of the table before he sat down. From the other end, looking at him through the wavering little flames, Jon watches him visibly relax as people’s plates are filled and they settle into their chairs and begin to eat. Good, he thinks. This is good. This will be fine.

Daisy is the first to speak. “Spaghetti’s good, Martin,” she says, and seems to mean it.

Martin smiles. “Oh—thanks.”

Basira and Tim nod and mumble in agreement. Melanie is picking at her salad, her steaming plate otherwise untouched. Jon catches Martin’s eye and lifts his chin a little, in acknowledgment. He hopes Martin takes it as praise.

The sounds of people eating are at least slightly more tolerable than the silence that would otherwise be present. The spaghetti _is_ good. He’s just about to ask if the recipe is Martin’s when Melanie scrapes the tines of her fork loudly across the bottom of her plate and leans back in her chair.

“Elias wasn’t invited, eh, Martin?” she says.

Jon is surprised by the venom in her voice. The others must be, too, because they almost simultaneously put down their forks and look at her.

Martin is staring. Melanie’s eyes are fixed on her plate, her jaw grinding.

“I—why would I invite _Elias_?” he says. His cheeks are coloring again. He fidgets with the napkin in his lap.

“Well, since you’re so keen on us all being _chums_ suddenly.”

“What?”

“Melanie,” Basira says.

“We’re not friends,” Melanie says. She drops her fork into her salad and crosses her arms over her chest. “Not really, are we? I don’t see the point in pretending we are, all of a sudden, right before you all go off on your suicide mission. This was a stupid idea.”

“Melanie,” Jon says, stunned, more sharply than he’d intended.

“What? You know it was a stupid idea. Everyone does.”

“If it’s so stupid, then why did you come?” Daisy says, calmly, with ice.

“Yeah, _Melanie_ ,” Tim says, “if it’s all so stupid and we’re not even your _friends_ , why did you even bother?”

“Oh, shut up, Tim.”

“Shut up, will I?”

Melanie narrows her eyes at him across the table. “I thought you fucked off to Mongolia. Why didn’t you stay, eh? For all the good you’ve done since you got back.”

“It was Malaysia, and you know why I couldn’t stay. Wish I fucking had, you lot are so depressing sometimes—”

“Depressing?”

“Depressing, yeah! When you’re trying to pick a fight all of a sudden—”

“I’ve been wanting to pick a fight for a while, mate—”

“Stop it, you two,” Jon snaps.

“No, let her say what she has to say,” Daisy says coolly. Her lip is the tiniest bit curled, her teeth showing. “Since she’s been chomping at the bit for so long, apparently. You think this is really the best time for it?”

“Don’t you start,” Basira murmurs.

“Go on, let it out. Make you feel good to shout, does it? Make you feel less impotent?”

“What the hell do you know about it?”

“I know for all your talk you haven’t managed to do a shred of what you intend to do.”

“You have no idea the hell I’ve been through since I landed at this fucking Institute—”

“Oh, don’t I?”

“That’s fucking rich coming from any of you. You don’t know _half_ of what it’s been for us—”

“Seniority doesn’t mean shit to me, so save it. If you’ve been through _so_ much why haven’t you been doing shit about it? All you do is hang about and complain—”

“Better than doing fuck-all—”

“As if you have room to judge—"

“All of you, _stop,_ ” Jon shouts.

Melanie throws her head in his direction. “Oh, you fuck off, too.”

“Excuse me?”

“You don’t have a leg to stand on in this conversation, you’re just as bad as Elias, if not worse—”

“ _Excuse_ me?”

“I said it, didn’t I? Why any of us even pretend to take direction from you anymore is beyond me at this point—”

Tim stands abruptly, his chair squealing back against the floor. “Watch your mouth about him.”

Melanie stands too, knocking her own chair back into the wall behind her. She juts over the candles and the salad bowl, perilously close to Tim’s face, sneering. “Since when did you give a shit what he thinks of you?”

“I don’t—”

“Yes, Tim,” Basira says, “since when was it us against you?”

“You know that’s not what I meant—”

“Do I?”

“Seems like it,” says Daisy, her arms crossed.

“None of you are fucking listening—”

“Oh, we’re listening,” Melanie snarls. “The two of them had better watch their backs in that museum, eh? Can’t trust you, can they? I wouldn’t trust you as far as I could throw you, myself—”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“ _Stop it!_ ” Jon shouts, again, standing, but everyone is shouting now, one over the other, their voices overlapping, fingers in one another’s faces, and then Melanie’s arm, in an aborted gesture, smacks the salad bowl in the middle of the table, which spins, hits the open bottle of Tim’s wine, and both of them go pirouetting off the edge of the table and crashing to the floor in a cacophany of broken glass and ceramic, one of the candles tips over and Basira shouts and Daisy moves to cover it with her napkin and in so doing knocks the other candle into the bowl of spaghetti bolognese where it flares for an instant before going out, buried and oozing wax, and Martin shouts, “All of you, _shut the_ _fuck_ _up_!” and finally there is silence.

He’s standing with his napkin crumpled in one fist and he looks as if he is on the verge of bursting into tears, or screaming, or hurling something across the room. His knuckles are white, his face drained of color, his breathing shuddery. He looks down at the mess of shattered pottery and spilled salad and expanding puddle of red wine on the floor and then looks up across the table at Jon—who is looking back, his ears burning, his chest vice-tight.

Jon sits heavily back down in his chair.

Martin clenches his jaw, and then unclenches it. When he speaks his voice is thick and strained and pitchy, with tears in it.

“I just wanted one—nice night,” he says, dropping his crumpled napkin on the table. “ _One_ nice thing. Just one nice thing. Because all of you are leaving in a few days, and I might never see you again. Ever.”

He looks at Melanie. She tries to look back, but in the end she can’t. Her eyelids flicker and she turns away, grits her teeth, looks down at the table.

“I’m sorry that you think it’s a stupid idea,” he says, venomous. “I know you all think I’m stupid, and pitiful, and that you only showed up because you didn’t want to hurt my feelings. Did you think I didn’t know?”

Tim sits back down and fixes his eyes on the wall past Melanie’s head.

“I’m sorry it was _such an ask_ to be—civil, and pretend to be polite, and enjoying yourself, for one night, for one _fucking_ night—”

His voice breaks, and Jon can’t look at him anymore. He feels a horrible yawning ugliness opening in his chest.

“I don’t care if you don’t care about me. I just wanted one little thing and you couldn’t even do that.”

Melanie swallows.

“Would you like us to leave?” Basira says softly.

“Yes,” Martin spits, “yes, now that you’ve all thoroughly ruined everything, I would like you to _get out of my flat._ ”

“Right,” she says, and pushes her chair back from the table. “Daisy.”

Martin stands there, fuming, his eyes filling with tears, while they step over the broken glass on the floor. Basira gathers her bag from the sofa. A moment later the door clicks behind them, and Martin, sounding utterly exhausted, waves a hand at the three of them remaining. “Just leave,” he says, and turns and disappears into the dark hallway. A door closes, and Jon sits in the thick, heavy silence with Melanie and Tim, the spaghetti bolognese still faintly smoking on the table between them.

It takes a long time for anyone to say anything. The clock on the wall over Tim’s head ticks quietly.

Finally, Melanie stands up and clears her throat.

“Does he have a broom somewhere,” she says, less a question than a demand, and Tim glares at her.

“In the cupboard.”

She goes into the kitchen, and Jon hears hinges creaking, sounds of rummaging. When she comes back in it’s with a red plastic broom and dustpan, and she drops this second onto the floor, begins to sweep the broken ceramic and glass toward it.

Tim watches, unmoving.

Slowly, Jon uncurls his shoulders. He can’t sit here anymore. He has to get up.

“Tim,” he says, softly, “help me with this.”

Tim sits watching Melanie for a moment more. Then he stands, pulls the ruined candle and candlestick out of the pasta.

Jon clears the table with him in silence. His mind is numb. He finds himself looking for the salad bowl on the table before he remembers it’s in pieces on the floor. Tim carries the wine glasses in to the kitchen and dumps them down the sink. Jon folds up the tablecloth and shakes it over the bin so that the crumbs fall into it. The flat is quiet.

Melanie finishes sweeping up and dumps the mess into the bin. Then she gets her jacket down from the peg in the front hall and leaves, slamming the door behind her.

Jon and Tim glance at each other.

The kitchen is still a mountain of dirty cookware and now dirty dishes, most still full of food, cold congealing pasta and wilting salad. The bowl of garlic bread is completely untouched.

Jon swallows, sweeps that annoying lock of hair back out of his face. He kneads at his eyes beneath his glasses for a moment, pressing so hard that colors bloom and bubble behind his eyelids, and then sighs and opens them again.

“Come on,” he says. “Let’s get this cleaned up.”

* * *

Martin makes no appearance. Jon doesn’t try to go and talk to him. He focuses instead on finding the dish soap and sponges and filling the sink with hot water. Tim finds a mop somewhere and goes back into the dining room to clean up the wine spill. In the sink Jon scrubs at what must be every pot and pan that Martin owns, rinses them off, sets them on the rack to dry. He scrubs out the wine glasses and puts them back in the cupboard. He hunts for a good ten minutes for something to put the leftover bolognese in, digging through Martin’s supremely disorganized cupboards until he finds something suitable. He puts it in the fridge, nestled among cartons of almond milk and a box of leftover pizza.

When the dishes are done he wipes down the countertops. He hands Tim a spare sponge when he comes in looking for one. Over the counter he watches Tim clean the dining room table and put the chairs back in place.

It’s an hour and a half before they’re done, but when they are Jon thinks it’d be hard to tell anything had ever happened here. No fighting. No broken cookware. Much less a dinner party, he thinks, with sadness. God, poor Martin.

By now it’s late, and the sun is long gone. Past Martin’s thrifted floral curtains the sky is black and the streetlights are on. Cars move softly below. He closes the bottle of dish soap and puts it away under the sink and stands, leaning to crack his back, and sighs.

Tim has flopped onto the sofa and is sitting there, unmoving, staring, working his jaw.

He doesn’t say anything when Jon slips into the hallway. There the door to what must be Martin’s bedroom stands, closed and confronting.

He puts his ear to it, but there’s no sound from inside.

“Martin,” he says softly. No answer. He knocks gently, the barest rap of his knuckles. “Martin.”

“Don’t bother him,” Tim says.

Jon bites his lip.

It isn’t locked. He turns the knob carefully, listening for any telltale squealing of unoiled hinges, but the door opens relatively soundlessly.

Martin’s room is dark except for some streetlight from the window. He can’t make out much—a dresser with some of the drawers pulled open, a desk with a computer charging silently on it, a few shapes on the walls that must be posters or photos. Martin is curled up on the bed, facing away, on top the covers. The light from the rest of the flat falls across him in a dim orange square.

“Martin,” Jon says again, but Martin doesn’t answer. He steps inside, carefully, picks his way across discarded socks on the floor, and crouches down by the bed.

Martin’s asleep, if his breathing is anything to go by. His glasses are folded up on the nightstand. Jon sighs, scrubs a hand back through his hair again.

He stands. Again he feels that damp clamminess that seems to be inherent to this place and thinks that Martin might be cold, sleeping atop the covers like that. In his jumper and nice trousers, no less.

That yawning ugliness in his chest is turning over into deep, deep sadness. Looking down at him, curled up as small as he can make himself. He feels ashamed, that he let things escalate so quickly. That he wasn’t more forceful, that he let himself be riled up like the others.

Martin was right. They really only came so as not to hurt his feelings. Jon knows that—knows it about himself, and that shame twists harder. _Martin should have known better,_ he thinks bitterly. _Nobody wanted this. We’re all too on edge, too jumpy, too angry. He should have known it was going to be a disaster._

But that’s not fair, is it? He knows it isn’t. Martin never asked for this. Martin never asked for any of this. He wanted to spend time with his friends—with the people he thought of as his friends—before they went off to Great Yarmouth, potentially to die. Before the world ends. Before everything goes even more to shit than it already is.

He could have tried harder to let him have it. He could have spoken to everyone beforehand and told them to behave, to be kind, to at least try. But he didn’t, because he was too wrapped up in how much he, Jon, didn’t want to come, didn’t want to sit around and pretend everything was okay, didn’t want to have to look Martin in the face and play along with his charade, no matter how much it would have helped him.

He’s not a very good friend at all, he thinks, looking down at Martin. Martin deserves better than him.

There’s a blanket folded up on the edge of the bed. Jon leans over and picks it up, unfolds it, drapes it gently over Martin’s curled-up body. He tiptoes around the baseboard to the window and pulls the curtains shut with a _hush_ ing sound, and then he creeps back out the door, closes it gently behind him.

“He’s asleep,” he says wearily, collapsing onto the sofa next to Tim.

Tim is looking vacantly at, or through, the coffee table. He blinks, and then tilts his head back, groans, laughs a little. Sighs.

“We’re awful,” he mutters, resting his head against the cushions.

“Yes.”

Down the street a car alarm begins to wail. They listen to it for a little while until it stops.

“Do you have a key?” Jon says, eventually.

Tim snorts. “No,” he says. “Do you?”

“No.”

“I don’t want to wake him up.”

“Me either.”

“You can go,” Tim says, stretching his legs out to toe off his shoes. “I’ll stay.”

“You think he’ll want to see you in the morning?”

“You think he’ll want to see _you_?”

They look at each other for a moment, and then Jon sighs.

“Fine.”

“Fine,” says Tim.

“Do you think he has spare blankets somewhere?” Jon says, levering himself up from the couch again, but Tim doesn’t answer. When Jon glances back he has already stretched out the full length of the sofa and is wrestling his jacket over him, curling his arms up underneath it, stubbornly closing his eyes.

It takes a while for Jon to find a throw blanket folded up in a cupboard in the hall. It’ll have to do. He turns off the lights in the kitchen and the living room and leans the armchair as far back as it will go.

* * *

The sun in his face and the soft babble of the radio wake him. He has to hunt on the floor for his glasses briefly, and when he sits up he sees Tim, putting on his jacket as if to leave.

“Morning, boss,” he says. His hair is at angles from sleeping on the sofa, and there are faint purple bags beneath his eyes. He’s never seen Tim so—rumpled, he supposes is the word. Jon peels the throw blanket off himself and looks down at the wrinkles forming in his slacks and shirt and supposes Tim hasn’t seen _him_ so rumpled before, either.

“How was the couch?” Jon asks, voice hoarse and mouth dry.

“Surprisingly comfortable.”

“Lucky you,” Jon mutters. There’s a nasty knot in his spine.

“I’m going to head out before he wakes up.”

“Probably smart.”

“Too late,” says a small voice from the hall.

Martin’s leaning against the doorjamb, a blanket pulled around his shoulders—the blanket Jon had covered him with last night. He’d come out of his room so quietly that neither of them had heard him. He smiles at them, but it’s weak.

They glance at each other.

“Uh,” says Jon.

“We didn’t feel comfortable leaving without being able to lock up,” Tim says.

“Yeah.”

Martin tries another smile. “It’s okay. I, uh.” He takes in the dining room, the empty kitchen counters, the crumpled mess of Jon on the armchair. He pulls his blanket a little tighter around his shoulders. “You cleaned up?”

“Melanie helped,” Jon says, just as Tim is saying the same thing, and they fall quiet, glance at each other, glance away again. Suddenly, under Martin’s scrutiny, all the shame of the night before has come roaring back, and Jon wishes he’d left when he had the chance. It’d be better than facing this right now.

“Yeah,” Martin says. He holds up his phone from under the blanket. “She, um. Texted me to say sorry.”

“Oh,” Jon says. “That’s good.”

The ticking of the clock on the wall in this flat, he thinks, is going to haunt him for the rest of his life.

“Well,” Tim says, patting his pockets, “I’m—gonna go.”

“Thanks for staying,” Martin says.

“Sure.”

The door closes behind him with a soft click, and then it is just Martin in the room with him, neither of them looking at each other.

Martin is still wearing his blue jumper from last night, Jon sees, out of the corner of his eye. He must have lain down and not moved until he fell asleep. His hair is matted to one side of his head and there is high color on his cheeks—flustered to have woken up to find them here, maybe. Or embarrassed.

“D’you want a cup of tea?” Martin says, and Jon starts. It isn’t the question he’d been expecting. He’d been expecting _can you please leave?_ It takes him a minute to stop gawping like a fish and answer.

“Oh,” he says. “Um—that’d be nice, yeah.”

“You didn’t eat much last night,” Martin says.

Jon feels his face going hot. “Yeah,” he croaks. “I guess I didn’t.”

Martin moves toward the kitchen, and Jon feels a wave of unknown courage hit him suddenly and nearly trips over the throw blanket in his haste to get up out of the chair. “Actually—Martin, let me,” he says, and Martin stops halfway across the room, blanket trailing on the floor.

“Um—”

“You cooked for everyone last night, I should—why don’t you, um, go and have a shower, maybe, and I’ll make us breakfast.” It comes out in one long breath, probably sounding a little more frantic than Jon had intended, but he needs a clear direction before the sheer awkwardness of this morning overtakes him entirely. He sighs, tries to loosen, shake out his limbs. “Listen, it’s the least I can do.”

“Oh.”

“And I, um.” He laughs, scratching absently at his face. “I got a good sense of how your kitchen works, last night, when I was, um. Cleaning.”

“Oh.” Martin looks at him, and back at the kitchen, and then swallows and fidgets in place. “Okay,” he says. “I guess. Yeah.”

“Okay.”

“I’m—I’ll go have a shower, then.”

“Okay,” Jon says. “Martin, I—”

Martin, who had turned to go back into his room, stops again.

“I’m really, really sorry about last night,” Jon says. He twists the fingers of one hand in the grip of the other. “I’m—sorry I didn’t do more to calm it down. It was inappropriate and cruel, I—”

“Jon,” Martin says, softly, smiling sadly, “let’s—let’s not talk about it. Okay? I really don’t want to think about it anymore.”

“I—alright.” Jon sighs.“I just want you to know that I—that we do care about you. Everyone’s just scared. You know?” He swallows. “We’re all just really scared.”

“Yeah,” Martin says. He pushes his glasses up his nose. The sun lies starkly on the floor between them. “I know. It’s okay.”

Jon stands there for a while even after Martin has disappeared into the bathroom and shut the door, and after the shower has turned on.

He _wants_ to talk about what happened. It doesn’t seem right to just pretend it away. Not given what’s coming up for them this week. He thinks of the suitcase half-packed on the floor of his bedroom at home. He’d spent ages trying to figure out what one wears to stop the end of the world, or if it even mattered. He’d sat on the edge of his bed wondering if it were healthy or not to write notes to leave behind—for Georgie and Melanie and Martin. He can’t imagine how hard it’s been for Martin to be on the other end of that spectrum—to be sitting still, knowing he can’t be involved in the action, waiting for the point at which they’ll all load up in their cars and drive away.

They couldn’t give him the one nice night he wanted, the thing that maybe would have helped him cope. But Melanie texted to apologize, and Tim cleaned up the wine, and Jon knows he saw eggs in the refrigerator. He doesn’t know how Martin likes his eggs, but he can make them. Maybe give him _something._ Sit and have a meal with him with no shouting and no insults and no pointed fingers. He hopes it’ll be enough for him, to get through it all along with them. They _are_ his friends, no matter what Melanie says in her frustration. He hopes Martin knows that. If he doesn’t, Jon thinks—well, he’ll have to change that, won’t he. At the very least he can try.

From down the hall he hears a very faint humming, coming with the steam out from under the bathroom door.

He sighs, and smiles to himself, and goes into the kitchen to get their breakfast ready.

**Author's Note:**

> too many rewatches of the "dinner party" episode of the office and several conversations about the differences between coworkers and friends in the archives later...
> 
> fremdschämen is a german term for secondhand embarrassment.


End file.
